Kidnapped French tourists taken into Nigeria

YAOUNDE: Kidnappers in Cameroon have taken seven French tourists across the border into neighbouring Nigeria after seizing them on Tuesday.

''The kidnappers have gone across the border into Nigeria with their hostages,'' the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Suspected Islamist militants kidnapped the French holidaymakers from one family, including four children, in Cameroon earlier on Tuesday.

The kidnapping took place at Sabongari, 7 kilometres from the northern village of Dabanga, near the Nigerian border, the foreign ministry said.

GDF Suez confirmed that one of its employees had been kidnapped with his family.

The French President, Francois Hollande, said during a visit to Athens that he was informed of the kidnapping by a Nigerian ''terrorist group that we know well'', without naming it.

France was doing everything possible to prevent the kidnappers moving their victims to Nigeria, he said at the time.

A statement from GDF Suez said the employee was based in the Cameroon capital Yaounde and that the family were holidaying in the north of the west African country.

A Western diplomat in the region said six armed kidnappers on three motorbikes had abducted a couple, their four children and an uncle. The children are five, eight, 10 and 12, the diplomat said.

A source close to the French embassy in Yaounde said the family had earlier visited a national park in northern Cameroon.

Asked whether the kidnapping could be a reprisal for France's military offensive against al-Qaeda-linked groups in northern Mali, Mr Hollande spoke of Nigeria's Islamist Boko Haram group.

''I note in particular the presence of a terrorist group, namely Boko Haram, in that part of Cameroon, and that's worrying enough,'' he said.

On Monday, an Islamist group in Nigeria claimed responsibility for taking seven foreigners hostage at a construction site in the northern state of Bauchi. Four of the hostages were Lebanese, one British, one Greek and one Italian.

Jamaatu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladissudan said its action was in response to ''the transgressions and atrocities done to the religion of Allah'' by European nations in countries such as Mali and Afghanistan.

Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg

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